“You’ve come!” she cried, and before the exquisite rapture and relief of her faint, quivering voice, with all that it implied of suffering past, a harder man than Julian might have melted. “My dear, my dear, I knew you’d come! I knew! I knew!”
But that pathetic voice had not been needed. The first sight of her face as she turned it upon him with that wonderful irradiation of joy upon it, had shrivelled into nothingness all the exultation, all the triumph and self-satisfaction of the past few hours, and Julian held her in his arms, his trance over, self-convicted, self-condemned; his whole consciousness absorbed in that heavy, throbbing agony of his better nature which had leapt into sudden relentless life. What it was that so penetrated him he could not have defined. Where and in what proportion old influence revived, touched, and was blended with a heart-piercing sense of the change in her, he could not have said; he did not even know that these were indeed the powers that had struck him. The change in her, even as he gazed down at her face with agonised, remorseful eyes, as it rested for one moment on his shoulder, he rather felt than traced and understood.
That change was very great. Those past six months had dealt heavily with that thin, white face, and the marks of their passing were plain to see, even in that moment of absolute transfiguration. Every curve, every suggestion of girlishness seemed to have been worn away; worn away by those cruel twin refiners, never so pitiless as when they work together—physical suffering and mental distress. The outline of her features had lost some of its beauty in that intense accentuation; the colourless lips were slightly drawn, and under the sunken eyes were heavy shadows. But no remembrance of the physical loveliness which she had lost could stand for an instant before the spiritual loveliness which she had gained. It was as though those twin refiners, before whom nothing earthly or external can stand and flourish, had strengthened that which lay behind the externals with which they had dealt so ruthlessly. The eyes, so indescribably beautiful as they looked now into Julian’s, had been beautiful even in that moment before she realised his presence; beautiful in their heaviness as no brightness, as no common happiness could have made them; beautiful with the perfect patience and dignity of accepted suffering. The tired mouth had been beautiful in its repose, as it was beautiful now in its tremulous rapture; beautiful in its quiet constancy and self-abnegation.
She let herself rest for a moment in his arms; clinging to him with something in her touch which he had never felt before; looking up into his face as her head lay back against his shoulder with a strange, tremulous, tender light quivering on every feature, shaken from head to foot by little tremulous, tearless sobs—the sobs of utter relief and peace. Then she disengaged herself gently, and drew herself away, something of that first ecstasy dying out of her face to leave it soft and happy beyond all words. That strange light still shone in her eyes, and, as she moved, one thin hand retained its clinging hold on his arm, as though some instinct of dependence influenced her involuntarily. She was dressed, not as the other girls had been, in a light summer jacket, but in a long cloak, and as she drew it about her with the other hand, the softest touch of colour came into her white cheek.
“My dear!” she said softly. “My dear!”
And Julian whispered hoarsely as he had whispered again and again:
“Clemmie! Clemmie!”
He made no attempt to take her in his arms again. Even the gesture with which he laid his hand upon those clinging fingers on his sleeve was diffident and almost tremulous; tender and reverent as no gesture of his had ever been in all his life before. He could find no words. In her presence everything—all the triumph, all that had seemed to him the necessities and realities of life—seemed to have fallen away from him. He was nothing. He had nothing! He could say nothing to her.
There was a silence; silence which for Clemence as her fingers closed round his, and that soft colour came and went in her cheeks, breathed an ineffable content; silence which for Julian held the blackest depths of self-revelation and self-contempt. It was broken at last by Clemence.